Trainer Spurns Triple Crown

Hambo Winner To Run At Balmoral Park

Harness racing's trotting Triple Crown--the Hambletonian, Yonkers Trot and Kentucky Futurity--appears to have evolved into an exercise in obsolesence.

Trainer Ron Gurfein considers his Hambletonian winner, Self Possessed, "probably the fastest trotter who ever lived," but the colt, who won in world-record time of 1 minute 51 3/5 seconds for a mile, has no shot at capturing the Triple Crown because he isn't competing in Saturday night's Yonkers Trot.

Instead, Gurfein is taking the newly-designated No. 1 harness horse in North America to Balmoral Park to use Saturday's $170,000 American-National race for 3-year-old males as a prep for the Sept. 4 World Trotting Derby at the DuQuoin State Fair.

Why will Self Possessed be in Crete rather than in north suburban New York, where he could put himself in a position to become the seventh Triple Crown winner and the first since Super Bowl in 1972?

"I never for a moment thought about taking him to the Yonkers Trot," Gurfein said. "The Triple Crown has nothing to do with it--this is a very, very fine horse and Yonkers is not a very good racetrack.

"I had another colt in the Hambletonian (fourth place Raffaello Ambrosio), and he needs to win a `grade 1' race to stand at stud in Italy. I knew he couldn't beat Self Possessed, so I'm putting him in the Yonkers Trot."

Although Guerfein concedes that the Yonkers Trot is "a grade 1 race," in his opinion "it isn't as big as the Hambletonian, the World Trotting Derby, the Breeders Crown (3-year-old trot) and the Kentucky Futurity. Those are the four biggest races."

And because of the American-National 3-year-old trot's calendar and geographic proximity to the World Trotting Derby at the DuQuoin State Fair, Balmoral boasts North America's No. 1 harness horse as its marquee attraction for the second straight Saturday night.

Red Bow Tie was the top horse in the Hambletonian Society/Breeders Crown poll when he came to Balmoral for the American-National aged pace last Saturday. But he was ambushed by the outstanding Illinois-bred, Big Tom.

Red Bow Tie's seventh-place finish took a toll in this week's poll--he was dropped to No. 2 and Self Possessed was voted No. 1.

Unlike Red Bow Tie, who made his Balmoral debut in the American-National, Self Possessed has been at the track twice before. placing in his career debut in the Hanover Stake and coming back--after appearances at the state fairs in Springfield and DuQuoin--to win the American-National race for 2-year-old male trotters.

"He was very impressive in those baby races, especially at DuQuoin, where he won in 1:54 1/5, but no one then could guess that he would turn out to be a 1:51 trotter. Absolutely not "

Self Possessed took a four-race winning streak into his elimination race for Garden State's Valley Victory in mid-October. While preparing for the race, he reared and fell, suffering minor injuries. He placed in his next three races before finishing a distant fourth in his last start of the year, the Nov. 14 Breeders Crown race for 2-year-old male trotters.

"After that accident he lost his edge in those races," Gurfein said. "When he came back and started training in January he was awesome."

When Self Possessed resumed racing this summer at the Meadowlands he started trotting the way he trained. The crowning moment was his 5 1/2-length victory in world-record time.

It was the third time that Gurfein and Lachance collaborated to win harness racing's most prestigious event. They won in 1994 with Victory Dream and in 1996 with Continental Victory, the filly who went on to be crowned Harness Horse of the Year.

"Self Possessed is a much faster horse than Continental Victory," Gurfein said. "I've never had a horse as fast as he is, and I don't think anybody else has. He's probably the fastest trotter who ever lived."